Art

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Art

Ann Weber Elevates Discarded Cardboard Boxes and Staples to New Heights in Billowing Sculptures

Exemplifying the possibilities of combining humble materials with a good dose of resourcefulness, Ann Weber’s monumental sculptures find their beginnings in discarded cardboard boxes. The San Pedro, California-based artist parlayed her training in ceramics into a focus on the everyday material, initially inspired by architect Frank Gehry’s cardboard chairs, which transformed utilitarian, heavyweight paper into structurally sound and visually appealing functional objects. Weber echoed a similar intention when she decided to eliminate the inherently cumbersome process and weight of clay in exchange for a lightweight material that could be scaled up.

The artist scours the neighborhoods of Los Angeles for boxes, paying special attention to those with printed surfaces; she carefully considers the colors of graphics and text and incorporates them into the overall composition of each work. In the studio, she begins by building an armature with larger pieces of cardboard to create the silhouette. She then applies layers of strips cut from other boxes and staples them into place in a repetitive, textured pattern.

While the forms billow, bulge, and tower overhead, the artist doesn’t want to obscure the ubiquitous material; instead, Weber invites the viewer to consider the substance in a way they might not otherwise, saying “cardboard has taken on more complex meaning in the 21st century with the hyper-capitalistic proliferation of excess shipping materials.” Paper accounts for more than a quarter of the waste in landfills globally. “The sculptures can be viewed as a critique of contemporary consumerist culture, but that is not my sole intent,” she continues. “They are instilled with a psychological component neither entirely representational nor abstract, but something in between.”

Weber recently wrapped up a major exhibition at Wönzimer Gallery in Los Angeles. Explore more of her work on Instagram and her website.

 

Art Photography

Watercolor Accentuates the Surreal and Metaphorical Nature of Annalise Neil’s Cyanotypes

A “pursuit of the unknown” grounds Annalise Neil’s practice. An enduring curiosity and a desire to find answers shape both her approach to and the form of her works, which layer watercolor accents atop cyanotypes. The pieces depict the unassuming and magnificent, “the tender yet muscular emergence of mushrooms from soil, the brittle and also supple curve of a snail’s shell, the translucent husk of a crinoid on the beach.”

Constructed with hundreds of hand-cut negatives, the composites veil flora and fauna in shades of blue, evoking the color’s ubiquity within the natural world and the mysteries humans have yet to uncover. Lined with yellow or rusty-colored pigments, the works feature familiar subject matter with positions and scale that veer toward the surreal: large hands descend upon an arid desert landscape, birds escape from a trio of shapes that evoke a mushroom cloud, and flowers, butterflies, and dewy spores encircle a central bloom.

These unearthly pairings allow “for a re-thinking of the human’s relationship to reality and our surroundings,” Neil shares, an impulse that also informs her desire to reconsider and better understand change and possibility. “I believe metaphor is the most effective illuminator of new concepts and is an excellent midwife for empathy. One of the most fecund qualities of the human mind is our ability to ask questions, be curious, and make adjustments.”

Neil’s solo show Holobiont is on view through March 30 at Herrick Community Health Care Library in La Mesa, California, where she lives. The artist is currently preparing for a February residency at Playa Summer Lake and will open an exhibition at Sparks Gallery in San Diego this summer. Until then, explore an archive of her cyanotype series on her site and Instagram.

 

Art Design

All of Us Skin Tone Crayons Reflect the Planet’s Diversity with Eight Different Pigments

How can you accurately draw the human population without an appropriately diverse array of colors? The team at All of Us offers a counter to traditional sets with its skin tone crayons in eight different hues. Made from beeswax and natural pigments, the collection is entirely hand-poured and is available in three shapes: triangles, rounds, and blocks. “I started making crayons in my kitchen because all children deserve to be seen,” All of Us founder Sabine says. “They deserve to have their smiles drawn on paper, in shades true to their identity.”

Pick up a few packs of the crayons in the All of Us shop, and follow the company on Instagram for glimpses into how the tools are made.

 

Art Design

Elaborate Towers Emerge from Basic Building Blocks in Raffaele Salvoldi’s Architectonic Installations

In January 2021 in the middle of Italy’s second Covid-19 lockdown, photographer and director Raffaele Salvoldi’s work took a different turn. “That was a tough time since I wasn’t working and had a lot of free time. So, I started to build small forms to keep my hands and mind busy,” he tells Colossal, sharing that he tapped into the nostalgic, childhood activity of tinkering and stacking simple wood blocks.

At the base of Salvoldi’s towering, temporary installations is a single component: KAPLA planks. Devised by a Dutch antique dealer in the late 1960s, KAPLA are an alternative to chunkier blocks that make it easier to build long or horizontal features like lintels and roofs. Initially, Salvoldi started with a set of 1,000 of the wooden construction bricks, and as he amassed thousands more, his constructions became increasingly voluminous. Spiraling columns, delicate towers, and airy apertures emerge gradually from a foundation on the floor, and the structures are often illuminated from inside and reveal dramatic effects in cavernous spaces. Each piece responds to its environment, drawing the eye upward to unique settings like the historic, neoclassical Casa Bossi. “The only limit is your imagination and, of course, gravity,” he says.

One of Salvoldi’s installations can take between three weeks and four months to complete, and rather than opening a show with a completed work, viewers are invited to observe as he adds piece after piece over time. “I believe it isn’t just a performance, rather a kind of a window on an artistic process,” he says. “That’s why I like to define it as a living, mobile room or atelier that people can visit and see the installation growing day after day, week after week.” When a show closes and the work must be disassembled, visitors are invited to deconstruct the installation by throwing additional planks at it until it crumbles, or the artist will devise a domino-like path of KAPLA that strikes at the foundations.

In May 2022, Salvoldi founded the project Wood Arc through which he continues his research into architectural and structural forms. Between February 12 and April 2, he will exhibit a new work at the 16th-century Villa Bono, just north of Novara, Italy. Find videos and more of his work on Instagram, and learn more about the project on his website.

 

   

Art Design

A Wooden Artwork Miraculously Unfurls into a Functional Desk Designed by Robert van Embricqs

The surge in remote work during the last few years prompted Amsterdam-based designer Robert van Embricqs to rethink how conventional desks would impact a home’s atmosphere. He wanted to invite “the user to fold that desk away when work is over” and created a now-viral piece that seamlessly transforms from office to artwork.

Constructed with warm wood and brass hinges, the “Flow Wall Desk” features flush vertical slats that twist and unfold into a tabletop. The small piece of furniture, which can support about 40 pounds, is minimal in aesthetic and mimics organic movements as it unfurls from sleek relief to functional space.

Find the desk and other modular designs in van Embricqs’ shop, and follow his work on Instagram. (via Hyperallergic)

 

Art Illustration

Detailed Illustrations Brim with Manic Mayhem in Mattias Adolfsson’s Exuberant Sketchbooks

In Mattias Adolfsson’s meticulous illustrations, organized chaos is the name of the game. Drawing inspiration from a recent trip to Japan, the Swedish artist has recently filled his 41st Moleskine notebook with science fiction-inspired scenes of sushi bar mayhem, urban piles, and travel woes. Redolent of Where’s Waldo, Adolfsson often incorporates a caricature of himself into each scene; his face peeks out from advertisements, food, and anthropomorphized objects. His characteristically frenetic drawings fill each spread from edge to edge in a finely-tuned balance of order and insanity, encouraging the viewer on an endless seek-and-find journey that reveals more peculiarities, details, and twists the more one looks.

Explore more of Adolfsson’s fantastical worlds on Behance and YouTube, where he pages through completed sketchbooks. You can also find more work on his website and purchase prints on Etsy.